Microsoft's October Patch Tuesday Plugs Up 23 Spooky Security Holes

We're already nearing the halfway point of October, and that means another Patch Tuesday. To help prepare for tomorrow's deluge of updates, Microsoft has issued its Advanced Notification for this month, which lays out eight security bulletins outlining 23 security holes across a range of software, including Windows 7/Vista/XP/Server and others.

All but two of the bulletins deal with stopping remote code execution. Out of those six, two are labeled as "Critical" and deal with Microsoft's .NET Framework, Silverlight, Windows, and Internet Explorer.

Every other bulletin is labeled as "Important," which describes "a vulnerability whose exploitation could result in compromise of the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of users' data, or of the integrity or availability of processing resources." It's the second highest of four ratings, the others being Critical (No. 1), Moderate (No. 3), and Low (No. 4).

You can view Microsoft's full Advance Notification for October 2011 here.